News & CommentKey Documents
August 14... Scientists from New Zealand, the U.K. and Finland are worried about a different kind of
electromagnetic weapon: One that could wreck havoc with the world's communications systems —think
HAARP run by a
Herman Kahn
wannabe. Check out the
press
release issued today by the University of Otago. For background, see
"Nuclear
Explosions in Orbit," a feature article originally published in
Scientific American.
August 9... Microwave weapons for crowd control used to be top-secret stuff. No more. Raytheon, which makes them for
the military, now promotes its Silent Guardian, a smaller
version of its Active Denial system (see MWN, M/A01), on the Web. Silent Guardian is "available now and ready for action," Raytheon promises.
The company even discloses its range, which used to be closely held. It can "de-escalate aggression" at 250 yards, Raytheon states in its best defense-speak. To tempt you further,
you can also download a 30-second
video, with an up-tempo soundtrack.
August 7... The trend continues. The August issue of Radiation Research is out and it has two papers on the possible effects
of RF/microwave radiation, one from
Finland and one
Sweden. In each
case, no effects were found. (See July 31 below.)
August 2... The incidence of malignant tumors on the two top floors of a high-rise building at RMIT University in Melbourne,
Australia, are within the expected range, according to reports released today. When benign tumors are included, however, the total tumor
count is statistically higher than expected. Southern Medical Services, which carried out the occupational health and safety
assessment for RMIT, attributes the
"apparent increase" to incomplete collection of benign tumor data by the cancer registry. The reports, together with RMIT public statements,
are available from the RMIT Web site. (See
also our posts of June 1 and before.) Southern Medical Services, found that
"there is no correlation between tumor case office locations and ELF magnetic fields greater than 4 mG."
